The present invention relates generally to a system and method for planning major outages for power generation systems, and more particularly, to an apparatus and methodology for creating highly configurable outage plans for gas turbines.
Servicing power plants is a very important and lucrative business for turbine manufacturers. Since both downtime as well as damage can be very expensive, it is necessary to plan outages for them in a timely manner and assure that all the infrastructure and the resources necessary are available “just-in-time”. Otherwise outages cannot be serviced properly and are likely to lead to cost overruns. However, this is a very complex process; there are many different types of turbines in service, and over a typical lifespan of 30 years or more, each turbine assembly will undergo a variety of modifications and changes to thereby become unique. Furthermore, turbine outages require a plurality of resources, both human and material.
Gas turbine operation is characterized by the use of atmospheric air as the working fluid and the direct injection of fuel into the compressed air. Gas turbine engines typically include a core engine with a compressor for compressing air entering the core engine, a combustor where fuel is mixed with the compressed air and then burned to create a high energy gas stream, and a first turbine which extracts energy from the gas stream to drive the compressor. The energy generated by the turbine is extracted for power generation. The rotating engine components of the turbine and compressor include a number of blades attached to a disc which are surrounded by a stationary shroud. The gas turbine components operate in a very high temperature environment and under a variety of loading conditions. Deterioration of parts due to thermal fatigue and wear is a real concern. Maintenance is performed to detect and control wear, as well as to repair or replace wear parts as needed to restore wear reserves. With proper maintenance, gas turbines can be operated with high reliability and availability despite the aforementioned characteristics. It is imperative that these maintenance services are performed quickly, and in a planned manner to make sure that the plants do not have any unscheduled downtime. An unplanned outage caused by a turbine failure can cause significant economic losses for the power generating authority.
Planning outages is a very complicated process. Gas turbines normally have a very long life and during each outage they undergo a certain amount of modification that makes them structurally unique. Also, each outage needs a significant amount of infrastructure availability and resources. The local infrastructure could either be available, rented or imported. In the same way the necessary parts could either be available in the facility warehouse or might have to be shipped in from the maintenance vendor's site. The same can be said of the required human resources. While some experts might be locally available, others may be required to travel relatively large distances to accomplish a given maintenance task. At the same time, certain work may easily be contracted out to local vendors. Hence, not only are a significant number of resources necessary, but there may be a myriad of options available with regard to resource planning. The cost of the final plan will be dependent on the mode and the actual configuration that are decided for each one of these resources.
In this field, U.S. Pat. No. 6,907,381 to Hayashi et al. (“Hayashi”) discloses a system for aiding in the preparation of an operation and maintenance plan for a power generation installation in which an operation plan for a plurality of power generation units is prepared by employing actual plant data and a variety of circumstances concerning the machines and parts thereof in the power generation units. For each power generation unit, a service center calculates power generation efficiency in real time by utilizing obtained plant and design data, and prepares operation and maintenance plans based on the calculated power efficiency. In accordance with an aspect of the system, an exchange timing of the apparatus and constituent parts is performed with reference to accumulated operating time, or calculated cost of economic loss and cost relating to exchange of the machine based on measured plant data.